Gender Quotas in Hiring Drive Away Both Women and Men

Dr. Meir Shemla is an Assistant Professor at Rotterdam School of Management. Anja Kreienberg is a double Masters degree graduate from Rotterdam School of Management.

It’s no secret. Good companies need good employees. In the war for top talent, companies are looking for ways to be more competitive – that’s especially true of the underutilized female talent pool. To attract more women, some companies have instituted gender-based affirmative action measures. One of the most controversial of these is the gender quota where organizations set aside a specific percentage of leadership positions for female employees. Instead of attracting great employees, however, we found that gender quotas drive top talent away. In a study we ran using
Qualtrics, we found that both women and men were less attracted to firms that instituted a gender quota and were less likely to pursue jobs there.

To begin our study, we introduced participants to two different job advertisements. The first noted that the company in question advocated gender diversity and, as a result, had set aside 40% of leadership -- specifically management and supervisory board -- positions for women. The second job advertisement included no information about either gender diversity or a quota.

Using the second advertisement as the control group, we found that one in four men were less likely to pursue a job at the firm employing a gender quota. Women also responded negatively to the gender quota that was meant to make the company more competitive in hiring women; 13% of women noted they would be less likely to seek a job at the company with the gender preference for hiring.

It is not that people didn’t understand the importance of gender diversity in the workforce, it was the quota itself that was most unattractive. Nearly 70% of respondents in the gender quota condition – of which 52% were female and 48% male – said that gender quotas in general were unattractive to them. Why? Respondents noted that a gender quota negated the importance of merit and led to unintended consequences.

First, when offered a job in the presence of a gender quota, female respondents were 18% more likely to attribute their success to preferential treatment rather than to their own merit. Second, when another woman was offered a job instead of the respondent at the firm with the gender quota, female respondents were 20% and male respondents 29% more likely to stigmatize that woman as incompetent, attributing her success to gender and preferential treatment rather than merit. Finally, female and male respondents felt that the values of a firm employing a gender quota fit less into their value and belief system, given that merit seemingly played a lesser role in the hiring decision than gender. Given the stigma associated with the quota and people hired under a quota, it’s no wonder that quotas have the adverse impact of actually driving away the very talent they were put in place to attract.

What does this mean for companies and policy makers? As they attempt to move toward a more diversified workforce, they may want to shift their focus away from a gender quota, which has counterproductive effects on a firm’s attractiveness to talented women and men. That doesn’t mean, however, that they should abandon the goal of diversity.

For example, one might learn from the global consulting firm,
McKinsey & Company. Rather than institute a gender quota, McKinsey has demonstrated their commitment to gender diversity by organizing networking events and career-focused initiatives specifically designed for women. They also have policies in place to accommodate female employees in balancing family and career. These initiatives attract women without undermining them by introducing the stigma a gender quota can carry.

While using a gender quota might seem like an effective way to compete in the war for talent, our research found that it actually drives away the highly talented professionals they were intended to attract. Gender diversity is important, but everyone wants to be valued for what they can bring to the table. When companies and policy makers institute gender quotas, they’re inadvertently driving away the very people they sought to attract by appearing to value diversity over merit. And that’s a situation in which no one wins.